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Q: When the 1930 census comes out in March, will it be Soundexed? -- Charles

A:
The countdown has begun. We are all eagerly anticipating
the release of the 1930 Federal Census. For some of us it will answer
questions that we have had for some time. For others it is a chance to
follow up on some of our families to see if they were still living or
possibly where they moved to.

Of course we are all wondering what to expect from this census. And since
we are getting used to indexes, it is natural that we would want to know
about any Soundexes that will be available for this Census.

1930 US Federal Census coming in April, 2002.

Release Date

The 1930 census will be available on 1 April 2002. The date is determined by
taken the date the census was taken, in this case 1 April 1930, and then adding
72 years. The 72 years is the provision from the federal privacy act. On 1 April,
microfilms of the Census will be available at the National Archives in Washington,
DC and the thirteen NARA branches.

For now, libraries can pre-order whole states, or the whole country. Those
pre-orders will be shipped the first week of April, 2002. This means there will
be a delay in our local repositories while they receive the films and catalog
them and make them available. Repositories that just want to order selected
films (for example, a county) cannot place their orders until April, 2002, so
that will mean an even longer wait before we can access them.

What's Coming

Two questions I see most often about the 1930 census are "Will it be soundexed?"
and "What information will be available on the census form?".

First the Soundex. Like the 1910, this census is not completely Soundexed.
The following states have been Soundexed for the 1930 census: Alabama, Arkansas,
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky (Bell, Floyd, Harlan, Kenton, Muhlenberg, Perry,
and Pike counties only), Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia (Fayette, Harrison, Kanawha, Logan,
McDowell, Mercer, and Raleigh counties only).

As for the questions asked on the 1930, there were 32 in all. They are broken
down in the list below:

Place of abode

Street name

House number

Dwelling number (in order of visitation)

Family number (in order of visitation)

Name

Name of each person whose "place of abode" was that family
on 1 April

Relationship

Relationship to the head of the family

Home data

Home owned or rented

Value of home (if owned) or monthly rental

If they had a radio

If the family lived on a farm

Personal description

Sex

Color or race

Age at last birthday

Marital status

Age at first marriage

Education

Whether each person attended school or college anytime since 1 September
1929

Whether able to read and write

Place of birth

Place of birth of that person

Place of birth of that person's father

Place of birth of that person's mother

Mother tongue of foreign born

Language spoken in home before coming to the United States

Citizenship

Year of immigration to U.S.

Naturalization

Whether able to speak English

Occupation & industry

Trade or professional

Industry

Class of work

Employment

Whether actually at work yesterday or the last regular work day

If not, the line on the unemployment schedule (the Unemployment Schedule
no longer exists)

Veterans

Whether a veteran of U.S. Military or Naval force,

What war or expedition

Farm schedule

Number of farm schedule (the Farm Schedule no longer exists)

Working without Indexes

While we must wait until at least April before we can access the census records,
there are some things we can do now to prepare, especially since most of us
will be working in those states that were not Soundexed.

The National Archives has a special set of microfilm on 156 rolls that gives
descriptions of census enumeration districts. These rolls cover the years 1830
to 1950. The 1930 census is found on rolls 61 to 90 ("T1224: Descriptions
of Census Enumeration Districts" is the publication). This link
will give the list of states and what roll they are on for 1930. Your library
or other repository may already have them. The Family History Library has the
rolls for 1910, another difficult year to research because of the lack of Soundex.

While rural areas will not have a problem, as some counties are on a single roll of film, when working in the large urban areas, a single city, like New York City, may be found on tens of rolls, making a line-by-line search impossible. However, when you combine the information supplied in micropublication T1224 with entries in city directories, you can narrow the number of enumeration districts you must search considerably.

While the 1930 census is not completely Soundexed, there are still ways to locate individuals. And you can use this waiting time to do that preparation work, so that when your repository does finally get the census microfilms you can hit them running.